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From rain to order?

Date: November 20, 2006Author: Anthony Bush

Over the past several months, there has been an increasing number of announcements to cause rainfall in arid regions. In China and in Australia, there is a serious interest in the process. Explanations.

The authorities have promised, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, August 8, 2008 will not be spoiled by the rain. The very official office of the modification of time watches over it. Usually, its role is to mitigate water shortages and cause rainfall with aircraft and rockets to improve agricultural yield.

And the process is of interest to many other countries. This is the case in Australia, Queensland more precisely, where the government of the province announced on 12 July its intention to cause rainfall. Confronted for several months with the drought, The region intends to take advantage of a traditional deterioration of time in November to take off a somewhat special bomber plane.

The mission of the aircraft will be to dump silver iodide dust near the clouds. These chemical particles would accelerate the condensation and thus cause precipitation. The principle is not new. It has already been tested several times without really being able to measure its real influence. “Apart from the dissipation of fog, the artificial modification of time is still in the field of research,” Jean-Pierre Chalon, director of the National School of Meteorology in Toulouse, told News.fr.